Recoil from the Real? – Žižek out of Athens

Abstract

Žižek's silence with regard to the 2008–2009 riots in Greek cities is puzzling. That the nihilist rebellion of 15-year-old bourgeois youth was joined by immigrant youth from a variety of Balkan (but also Middle Eastern) backgrounds – many of the youngsters raised (and even born) in Greece but bearing no citizenship rights – attests to a phenomenon that operates on social, cultural, and political surplus in relation to strict nationally driven protests. Is Žižek's silence testimony to his reluctance to engage with Balkan surplus when it does not fit standard “postsocialist” parameters?